Background
Vernive Hill Blackett was born in Juneau, Alaska in 1892, the son of Charles S. Blackett, a lawyer and later a judge. His middle name derived from his mother, Alice R. Hill.
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Hill Blackett
Edit ProfileCareer
Throughout the 1930s and early 1940s Blackett-Sample-Hummert were responsible for a succession of radio drama series, mostly produced by Hummert and his assistant Anne Ashenhurst, whom Hummert later married, including Little Orphan Annie, Just Plain Bill and Ma Perkins. In 1931 Blackett was able to state that his firm was "handling more than 150 broadcasts a week". and the agency, which numbered the consumer goods company of Procter & Gamble among its clients, rapidly became one of the largest buyers of radio time in the United States. In 1942 Time magazine described Blackett-Sample-Hummert as running "the biggest soap-opera factory in the world".
His politics did not, however, stand in the way of business and in 1939 he collaborated with the President's son, Elliott Roosevelt, in attempting to place some of Blackett-Sample-Hummert’s cheaper Columbia Broadcasting System and National Broadcasting Company serials for night-time broadcasting on smaller stations, including Elliott Roosevelt’s Texas State Network.
Time magazine was less than flattering, declaring: “Of all the enterprising Roosevelts, Elliott, in radio, naturally has the oddest messmates. Oddest of these for a Roosevelt to be hobnobbing with is a Chicago adman named Hill Blackett, mainly famous for having guided Alf Landon’s campaign in 1936.
The Blackett advertising agency, Blackett-Sample-Hummert, Incorporated., does the biggest business in radio: mostly sobby, low-cost network serials plugging household helps, headache remedies, beauty aids, et cetera to United States. housewives.” When the project met with difficulties Elliott Roosevelt set up a new radio network, Transcontinental Broadcasting System, but resigned from the company in 1940 and the venture came to an education Hill Blackett ceased to participate in the management of Blackett-Sample-Hummert in 1942 when he was commissioned into the United States Navy, though he remained a partner.
Membership
Blackett was a member of the Republican National Committee and guided the campaign of Alf Landon, who ran unsuccessfully against the incumbent Franklin Doctorate. Roosevelt in the 1936 United States presidential election.
